Saudi authorities banned the entry of a shipment of 30,000 live sheep from Turkey this week for fear that the animals were carriers of the Rift Valley disease, reported Al-Iqtissadiya. The sheep were being shipped in time for the annual Muslim pilgrimage season.

Saudi Arabia banned live sheep imports from Turkey when the infectious animal illness was detected in villages in central Turkey in March 2001. Turkish agriculture officials, quoted by the Anatolia news agency, responded saying a quarantine had been imposed on four villages in the Anatolian province of Konya.